Curry Pickles

I've been trying a lot of pickles lately.   Just a couple of pints of each to see if we like them.    It's a big adventure because we're sort of a two pickle family:   dilly beans and sweet pickle chips.  The end.

Gluten Free Girl hosted a pickle party this summer and she posted a ton of links to all sorts of pickles for all sorts of vegetables.   It was amazing.    It also made me braver.  

I tried three new kinds of pickles:   Curry pickles with regular old green beans, Szechuan pickles with Chinese long beans, and spicy coriander pickles with carrots.    Over the next couple of days, I'll give you all of the recipes that I used and tell you how we liked them.    I hope you share your favorite pickles with us, too.

UPDATE:   We had a pickle taste test today and the verdict on these curry pickles was that they need some adjusting.    The curry flavor is nice, but the curry powder isn't the way to get there.   These were some of the suggestions for the curry pickles:   Toast the curry powder to get a richer flavor OR use a tablespoon of red or green curry paste instead of powder OR use curry spices instead of the powder and let the flavors meld in the jar.       Next batch I'm going to try the curry pastes.   I'll try red paste in one jar and green in another.  

I've adjusted the recipe below to reflect our findings.  

Curry Pickles

• Green beans - enough to pack 2 pint jars
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1 T yellow curry powder curry paste or toasted curry powder
• 1 T canning salt
• 1 dried chili pepper in each bottle.
• 1 garlic clove in each bottle

Wash and trim the beans and pack them into the jars. Put a chili and a garlic clove in each jar.   Boil the water, vinegar, salt and curry powder.   Pour over beans until they're covered 1/2 inch with liquid.  Process 10 minutes for canning.

Wait for 4-6 weeks before opening.  

If you have left over pickling liquid, you can save it!   Just pop it in a jar and label it.   You can use it for dressings, or to deglaze a pan or anywhere else you'd like to use a nice flavored vinegar.   You do not have to refrigerate it, but you can.